99 pages • 3 hours read
Phillip M. HooseThe Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club
Nonfiction | Biography | YA | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapter 18-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary: “Our Evening with Mr. Churchill”
The Germans march out of Denmark and Nazi collaborators are arrested. The SOE-led resistance helps to manage Denmark’s transition from occupation to freedom. Knud is ordered to oversee the transition at a building in Aalborg airport. He is shocked to find it is still run by Germans, who are checking Danish ID cards. He and his group take over. Knud gives the order for all Germans to depart within two hours and confiscates ID cards. Shortly after, soldiers and Danish resistance fighters swarm the airport. Knud’s orders are cancelled and he is scolded for exceeding his authority. Knud is angered at the leniency being shown Germans and their collaborators. With other group leaders, he draws up a list of demands for the transition. He gives them to a printer, who calls the police. Knud is relieved of his command post and his weapons are confiscated.
Several days later, Knud is welcome back warmly by the same people who dismissed him. Major General Richard Dewing, the British commander of military forces in Denmark, is coming to Aalborg and wants to meet the Churchill Club, Denmark’s first resisters. At the meeting, Dewing is very interested in the club’s story, asking questions and listening closely to each member. He tells them he will relay their story to Winston Churchill.
Five years later, the club has dispersed. Members are starting careers and families. Knud is studying law and art in Copenhagen. One day, he sees an electronic headline in the city square proclaiming: “Churchill Club to Meet Winston Churchill”(164). He tries to call home from a telephone box, but does not have enough money. He sees a banner in front of a hotel that reads: “CHURCHILL CLUB MEETING HEADQUARTERS” (164). The concierge tells Knud they have been looking for him all day. Churchill Club members arrive that day and the next, except for Jens, who is working in India.
Prime Minister Churchill heard about the Churchill Club from Ebbe Munck, a famous Danish resister. He was moved and requested to meet them before a speech he is scheduled to give in Copenhagen.
Knud gets lost and misses the moment when Churchill ceremonially greets the club. Knud runs into Churchill in the hall outside, and their eyes meet for a moment. An attendant asks Knud for his card. Knud hands it over, and is led to a special VIP box, where he sits beside a Danish prince and an admiral. When the lights go down for Churchill’s speech, Knud takes out the card to see what it could say that could have placed him in this VIP area; the card has his name, and underneath his title: “Member of the Churchill Club.” Knud reflects that this same title has led him to prison, “been cursed and lauded” (166) by thousands, and that he will now wear it with pride for life.
Epilogue Summary: “The Times That Followed”
The Epilogue provides a brief summary of what happens to the Churchill Club after the war. Hoose writes that “the experiences of imprisonment, war, and sabotage work left many of those in the Churchill Club and the RAF Club scarred for life in various ways” (167).
Knud works briefly as a news reporter and at a film company before devoting himself to art. In 1957, he founds the world’s first art lending library. His own artwork hangs in prestigious museums around the world. Knud dies shortly after he and Hoose finish work on the book, in December 2014. He is a national hero and is buried alongside other renowned Danish figures.
Jens studies engineering and goes to work in India after graduation. He becomes depressed and returns to Denmark to be a lecturer at his former college. His health declines, and he struggles with depression until his death from lung cancer in 1988. Knud says that Jens lived a “very unhappy life” (169).
Eigil becomes a civil engineer. He suffers episodes of depression, nightmares, and short-term memory loss throughout his life and receives two years of treatment from a counselor who specializes in helping resisters. He dies in 2012.
When the others are in prison, Børge gets caught trying to blow up a bridge near his youth institution, but he is still too young for jail. After the war, he becomes the “leader of a small religious movement” (169) and has 12 children.
Mogens works for the Council of the city of Aarhus. Helge becomes an engineer and is alive at the time of the writing of the book. Uffe, who was passionate about model airplane building, becomes a pilot.
The three older members, Alf, Kaj, and Knud Hornbo, are still in prison at the end of the war. Alf escapes with the help of a prison pastor and returns to resistance work in Denmark, helping to sink two German ships. After the war, he commits suicide after a series of heart attacks leave him paralyzed. Kaj also dies as a young man, and Knud Hornbo immigrates to the U.S.
Hans, Knud and Jens’ cousin and member of the RAF Club, dies in a German prison.
Patricia Bibby remains lifelong friends with the Pedersens.
Chapter 18-Epilogue Analysis
The Boys Who Challenged Hitler concludes with the end of World War II and the meeting with Churchill, but it cannot be said to have an entirely happy ending. Members of the Churchill Club, most notably Jens and Eigil, suffer from post-traumatic stress symptoms for the rest of their lives.
Denmark’s transition from occupation is not very straightforward, either, as the country has to come to terms with its Nazi sympathizers and collaborators. It is a complex web, as shown by the speed with which English and Danish resistance fighters arrive at the airport when Knud tries to expel the Germans. Knud claims that “the scene at the airport was firsthand evidence that elements of the resistance had been corrupted” (161). Knud’s idealism and desire for quick action continue to be frustrated even after the war is over.
Knud’s struggles with the organized resistance are also emblematic of his general propensity to buck authority and discipline. Knud has a strongly individualistic and entrepreneurial spirit, which is in evidence in the rest of his biography—he becomes an important artist, invents and founds the first art library, and starts a film college with his wife. Knud’s reflections on the title on his business card—“Member of the Churchill Club” (166)—and all that it has led to make it clear that he would carry the title no matter whether it brought him official honors or not. Knud has a strong, interior sense of right and wrong that he carries with pride throughout his life.
The meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the namesake of the Churchill Club, is a highly significant, triumphant, and symbolic moment in the book. Once persecuted and imprisoned, the club is now receiving official high honors and recognition. Churchill and the members of the club mutually admire each other’s fighting spirits and roles in the war. The meeting with the renowned prime minister is a symbol of the immense power of determined citizens, even if those citizens are teenagers.
